What about shutting down passenger service on the Lexington/Bedford line in anticipation of the Red Line extension that was shockingly NIMBY'd out of existence?

or spending all of that money on the new trackless trolleys only to pull down the wires over Trapelo?

or building the Braintree extension in such a way that adding a dual-tracked ROW for proper CR service on the Old Colony Lines would cost about as much as building a new subway from scratch?

or reneging on their legal obligation to build the Red<-> blue connector?

or choosing to spend >1 Billion extending the most overburdened line of all into a city with hundreds of thousands of riders when DMU/EMU service would have been far cheaper and wouldn't have led to ANOTHER CR line getting crippled by single-track running?

Bramdeisroberts wrote:or choosing to spend >1 Billion extending the most overburdened line of all into a city with hundreds of thousands of riders when DMU/EMU service would have been far cheaper and wouldn't have led to ANOTHER CR line getting crippled by single-track running?

I thought both the Fitchburg and Lowell lines will both still be 2 tracks after the GLX?

I can't see how they can shoehorn 4 tracks and required separation of LR and CR into that right-of-way. (Especially on the outer end, beyond the junction with the old freight cut-off.

Seriously, the MBTA did some good things and some bad things over the years. Sadly, many of the bad things will remain as long as we have a transit system. Also, one must remember that the MBTA was dealt a bad hand by the McLernon era of the MTA, when much valuable infrastructure was trashed. In recent years, though, the MBTA has sold off much of its most valuable long-term asset - real estate - to raise short term cash. A classic example was the sale of key property at Ashmont Station, during the "rehabilitation" of the station, creating major disruptions for the customers.

The MBTA needs a funding arrangement which insures that it can meet future needs, not by ill-advised capital programs, but by improving existing service.

Gerry. STM/BSRA

The next stop is Washington. Change for Forest Hills Trains on the Winter St. Platform, and Everett Trains on the Summer St. Platform. This is an Ashmont train, change for Braintree at Columbia.

You hit the nail on the head, it all comes down to funding, which the T rarely gets anywhere near what it needs to run a proper public transit system, much less to build and improve for the future. They do a great job with what we give them, but unfortunately they have to rob Peter to pay Paul every day in order to do it (I.e. station renovations when the trains that go to them are 40 years old).

Compare that to how the MTA, Transport For London, or even the WMATA manages to keep themselves funded with what they actually need to provide good service and adapt to new needs.

I think a lot of the problem lies with the political landscape in this state, where every little community seems to have this extremely shortsighted view of "well I don't live in Boston and the T doesn't service me directly, so why should I have to pay for it?".

If we look a few hundred miles to our Southwest, we'd see that New York, and by extension the MTA, Metronorth, and the LIRR have no problem flexing their political muscles and reminding the rest of the state that without them, their state's economy would look no different from that of Northern Ohio without the economic boost from Cleveland, so just give us what we need to keep NYC ticking.

Massachusetts is no different, but for some reason, nobody in City Hall or the transportation building seems to want to take that approach, and so things with the T are left mired in their current state of chronic mediocrity.